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Use this forum to have philosophical discussions about aesthetics and art. What is art? What is beauty? What makes art good? You can also use this forum to discuss philosophy in the arts, namely to discuss the philosophical points in any particular movie, TV show, book or story.

boywonderlord
Yeah sure, language is created by us, so nothing inherently exists. You can define everything in existence as art, and you can define one thing as art. I can create an urban dictionary describing each aspect of salt in the sea with the word cat written twenty hundred times in different fonts. I could just write the word poop twenty times and have that amount to the same thing as this paragraph. It is a pointless play on words, and to a degree, everything is as meaningless as the play on words you have just discovered. Congratulations, welcome to philosophy, it is wordplay, and everything is wordplay. Its just one somewhat complicated world that we have created. Limited,but as long as you ignore its contradictions, quite the spectacle. You are not ignoring its contradictions. That, however, does not make you special. It is quite easy to find these contradictions. What is cool, however, is toying with them and creating wonderful fallacies and loopholes and strange toys that make no sense but create music of life, of words, it is the creation of ideas! So sure, art isn't real. But it is! So wake up to the flowers, its time to play with those christmas presents.

It is not wordplay. It is understanding art. Art is not an object, it is a disposition, an interpretative stance. All things are not art, but they become art when one sees them as art. It is the "seeing as" that allows for all things to be art possibilities. This, however, invites the question, what is it that is in the interpretative act of seeing something as art that makes something art? This is complicated, that is, since art has become so inclusive, it requires a "text" to know what the art claim is about. All art is implicitly conceptual art, to some degree.
And incidentally, we don't create language, language creates us. Think about it.

I would argue that art is entirely subjective. Everyone can claim that their work is an art, but other people can make their own decisions about it. If many people agree with you and accepted your work as an art, then it will be considered valuable by that group of people. If you claim something is an art, and other people doesn't get it, then it's meaningless to them. If no one in the present gets it, then no one will say it's an art but you, but if some people in the future does, the it's also art for them.

So if an artist is to make art that would be appreciated by others, then he/she must have a connection, or deep understanding of others, or of a universal truth that can be understood by all. A good art then is something that evokes a feeling, or insight that can be understood by others of the same culture, or same sense of beauty. A truly great art, is something that goes deeper, and transcends cultural boundaries and thus can be understood by every person no matter from what culture.

An artist that does not possess this can be called "out of touch", and while in his/her own mind the artist thought he/she had something great and wonderful, no one will understand it, and will not consider it an art.

There are certain categories of “Art” I don’t call art. The main issue is the confused mongrel language of English. Art, craft, science, skill, beauty, aesthetics and many other terms get easily knotted.

Some distinctions I prefer to account for are:

- To actively look at something in an artistic manner (regardless of what it is). To look at the clutter on someone’s desk doesn’t make it a piece of Art yet you can quite easily view it artistically.
- Something recognised as a Work of Art without someone having to point it out to you.
- Conceptual Art = something that isn’t actually artwork and more appropriate to a physical manifestation of an idea having more in common with intellectual/philosophical thought than displaying a strong emotional expression (the key here being the affect of rationality on the creative process).
- Art, as in the manner of doing something. The “art” of playing football or drawing a picture (akin to skill or craft rather than being an artistic endeavor in and of itself - “drawing” in relation to emotional expression and draughtmanship).

My view is that a great deal of the confusion comes with the ground from which Art blossoms. That is it is about a connection between conscious appreciation and the unconscious coming forth into awareness and how we express it. Hence why I don’t call “Conpectual Art” art; because it is more about the conscious act of interpreting some tangible politcal/social idea than allowing emotions to flow more freely readily. This rough distinction is troublesome of course, but I feel the need to at least adumbrate a vague idea of where “Art” begins and whre “Art” ends ... otherwise everything is art and the term is meaningless - a mistake I’ve seen a few make because they mistake “viewing” everythign as Art as being what a art is.

We don’t perceive a chair and call it a giraffe or call a giraffe the intermediatary place between calmness and anxiety, so why call anythign we please “art”? What purpose is there to do so? None that I can fathom other than to avoid the whole complex issue of human aesthetics and human emotional expression.

Hi Burning Ghost,
I agree with you that art is not supposed to be something that is consciously formed to give physical form to a certain idea (that would be design, not art).
What I meant by an artist creating an art that can be understood by others should not be brought out by a conscious, or deliberate effort and thinking to make it so.
It is simply, that the artist, by merit of his/her experience, knowledge, and wisdom in life, marries those inner qualities into the artwork as they are expressing themselves in it.

And other people, when they see this art, will be able to connect and perceive those qualities.

As an example:
An artist who loves nature, and spends many time with nature, will notice many things in nature that was not readily apparent to him/her.
That artist then, when in the process of making art, expressing his/her love of nature, pours these things unconsciously into his/her art.
People who see this art then, will see that it conveys a hidden knowledge, that was not apparent to them, but know in their deepest (or perhaps most primal) part of their mind to be true.

If another artist then comes, who always spent his/her days in cities, makes an art about nature (not the longing for it), he/she will not possess the same insight that the previous artist had.
And the art that is produced would not be valuable, since it does not offer any insight to the viewer. (It is 'shallow', because the artist's knowledge is shallow.)

It is also the same if the subject is people, or other things, like love, friendship, or God.

P.S. this might be a difference in the concept of art in the West and the East that my professor taught me about.
That, based on his observations, that most of the paintings, and art in the West is more focused on the individuals (you can see the subjects being the focus of the painting)
While in the East, they are not so.
This can also be seen in most video games, with more games in the West being focused on making the player the main character, while more games in the East instead puts the player as the mere listener of a story.

On intersubjectivity, I do held the view that art is a result of intersubjectivity.
If we would show the Mona Lisa to an intelligent species from another planet, or nay, to an isolated tribe of humans, would they be able to recognize it as an art, without being told that it is an art?

I might even go as far as saying that any value is a result of intersubjectivity.
(While facts, that dictates no value, are the only things that are objective. It is an objective truth that 1+1 is 2, but it is a mere fact, and not a value, it doesn't tell you what's more or less valuable)
As an example, the concept of chastity might have a great value in some cultures, while having no value at all, or even considered a bad thing in other cultures.

The only thing I can think about that would be the closest thing to something that is objectively valuable is energy.
At least, all life, no matter their form, requires energy to exist. (although, if there really are multiple dimensions, with different laws of physics, even this might not be true)